What the world surely needs right now is yet more Ghostbusters news, which is why Dan Aykroyd is here to float the idea of a Ghostbusters prequel.
In the wake of Jason Reitman’s surprising announcement that a third Ghostbusters movie would be on the way in 2020, there’s another project sitting on the director’s desk that may or may not become a reality in the future, according to Aykroyd, one that will take us back to the late 60s, where we would witness Peter Venkman, Egon Spengler and Ray Stantz in the early days of their flirtations with the paranormal.
“I’ve written Ghostbusters High, where they meet in New Jersey in 1969 and we’re looking to do that as probably a glorified feature or pilot within the next maybe five years. And it would lead to a television project and I thought of him immediately for that,” Aykroyd told 660 City News (via io9), adding “It’s on [Reitman’s] desk but that’s years away from the current project. But it’s a neat idea for a prequel. Imagine casting the three characters as teenagers!”
It’s hard to get Ghostbusters fans to agree on much these days, other than that the first film was great, and The Real Ghostbusters inspires warm, fuzzy memories for the most part. 1989’s Ghostbusters 2 – released five years after the original movie became a surprise hit for Ivan Reitman and his stars, Bill Murray, Harold Ramis, Ernie Hudson and Aykroyd – certainly has its fans, as does Paul Feig’s all-female 2016 reboot film, but catchin’ and exorcisin’ ghosts as a concept has been done to death in the last few decades. Despite that, one only has to look at the 15-season span of The CW’s Supernatural to see that it’s not a theme that’s about to lose its popularity any time soon.
A prequel film or series focusing on the teenage Ghostbusters could be super fun, or it could feel a little redundant, such is the nature of the ultimate peril-nixing ‘we all know they make it out of this alive’ part of the prequel equation.
In the meantime, Ghostbusters 3 will be released on 10th July, 2020.
